Madagascar Blu-ray Review

Madagascar goes Blu and it looks great!

Following in the footsteps of Antz and Shark Tale, Madagascar is the latest family odyssey from DreamWorks. Like its predecessors, the film is never wont to preserve longevity in the name of a good punchline (DreamWorks' films are littered with timely rather than timeless humor). But in this particular case, that's a good thing, because the movie turns out to be one of the summer's first great surprises, and outranks any other animated film in recent memory if only for its dedicated avoidance of any and all lessons imparted or learned.

At the Central Park Zoo in New York, Alex the Lion (Stiller) is the main attraction at a cornucopia of captive creatures. His best friends Marty (Rock), a zebra, Gloria (Pinkett-Smith), a hippo, and Melman (Schwimmer), a giraffe, dutifully support his benevolent reign over the zoo, but lately, Marty has grown a bit restless, and his latest birthday only serves as a reminder that he's never been – or even seen – outside the walls of the zoo.

Like most of the other modern animated movies from either Pixar or Dreamworks, Madagascar looks fantastic on Blu-ray with its lush colors and supreme clarity. Madagascar is presented here in 1080p resolution picture (1.85:1), which is encoded using the AVC encoder. Yet another transfer from a purely digital source, this one does not disappoint. All of the fine hair on Alex's mane is clearly visible and the lush jungle comes to brilliant life thanks to the clean and bright colors that adorn the entire movie. Black levels are excellent, providing great contrast between Marty's black and white zebra skin against everything else in the background. However among all of these great accolades, I did notice some rare instances of artifacing that slightly mars an otherwise perfect transfer.

Score: 9 out of 10

Languages and Audio

Madagascar on Blu-ray is provided with a good but not mind-blowing Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround track that more than adequately handle the film's surprisingly somewhat limited sound design. Expecting a more robust and dynamic mix, the sound effects and dialogue are for the most part, pretty laid back and not that immersive. For whatever reason, the surround channels are left unused for most of the movie and all the action is front-heavy. The LFE comes alive at appropriate times but it does not offset the lack of more immersive surrounds. Dialogue is crystal clear and is well balanced against the other sound effects. For what it is worth, this TrueHD track does sound inherently more rounded and better overall than the previous Dolby Digital 5.1 track on the DVD release. Other audio tracks on this Blu-ray include French, Spanish and Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1 and subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French Spanish and Portuguese.

Score: 8 out of 10

Packaging and Extras

For its debut on high-def, Dreamworks chose to stick to the routine and port over all of the supplemental material from the movie's DVD release and upgrade most of them to high-def video while adding an exclusive pop-up trivia track that can be accessed during movie playback. First off, we have an audio commentary with co-directors Tom McGrath and Eric Darnell. Nothing to write home about but the two speakers here provide some interesting but sometimes meandering information about the movie and how it got made. Next is "A Christmas Caper," a short film starring the film's wacky penguin horde. This is by far the best feature here and it provides some pretty hilarious moments--short but sweet. Up next is a set of production featurettes that takes a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film. They include "Behind the Crates," "Meet the Wild Cast," "The Tech of Madagascar" and "Enchanted Islands." Moving on, we have "Penguin Chat," a pretty nice idea of having the in-character penguins comment about some of their scenes in the movie. Then we have "Mad Mishaps," a blooper reel that feels more forced than anything. Finally there are some kid-friendly supplements that include an art lesson and a music video for the song " I Like To Move It, Move It."

Score: 7 out of 10

The Bottom Line

Among the many computer animated movies, Pixar's diverse repertoire starts at the top tier along with the first Shrek movie. A notch down, on the second tier sits Madagascar, an entertaining yet uncompelling movie that never quite reaches the heights of a Finding Nemo or a Toy Story. Nonetheless, Madagascar is a pleasurable movie to sit through for the entire family but whether it will hold up to the test of time, that's a whole new story.